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The vital factor in any of the “re‐” strategies (reinvention, re‐engineering, realignment, re…) is people’s personal capacity for accommodating change. The most successful organizational transformations include a focus on the readiness of the people as the real source of change. Proposes that a practical framework and tool kit approach can be used to build the critical internal capacity for change. Presents a case study of the framework as conducted in a customer‐focused human resources quality alignment project at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

This study explains the variation of government responses to the pandemic by focusing on how centralization/decentralization in politics and administration creates conflicts and coordination problems. Specifically, the authors make comparisons between the U.S. and South Korea to reveal differences in macro-level structures and associated responses. One of the key points of comparison is the centralized, hierarchical governance system, which may thwart or facilitate a coordinated response.

This is an in-depth comparative case study of the two countries that showed different trajectories during the initial response to COVID-19. The comparison allows us to highlight the long-standing debate about centralization/decentralization and offers implications for government responses to crises shaped by political systems and administrative structures.

While there are inherent pros and cons to decentralization, the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the institutional limitations in American federalism and the advantages that centralized administrative coordination creates during times of crisis. American federalism has unveiled systematic problems in coordination, along with the leadership crisis in polarized politics. The response from South Korea also reveals several issues in the administratively centralized and politically polarized environment.

While the authors risk comparing apples and oranges, the variation unveils systematic contradictions in polarized politics and offers important implications for government responses in times of crisis. However, this article did not fully account for individual leadership as an independent factor that interacts with existing political/administrative institutions.

There is certainly no one best way or one-size-fits-all solution to mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic in countries under different circumstances. This article demonstrates that one of the essential determining factors in national responses to the pandemic is how the political and administrative dimensions of centralization/decentralization are balanced against each other.

Unlike previous studies explaining the country-level responses to COVID-19, this study focuses on the variance of political and administrative decentralization within each country from the political-administrative perspective and reveals the systematic contradictions in coordination and the leadership crisis in polarized politics.

Competition is now widely used as the means of choosing the providers of essential public services in the USA and the UK. Many different approaches are found in the USA and there are useful lessons for the UK. With particular reference to mental health and substance abuse services, describes the effects of using competitive tendering on users, providers, purchasers and citizens and examines the problems of specification, transaction costs, the use of consultants, supply, the level playing field, trust, innovation, local accessibility and accountability. Ends with discussion of co‐operation and collaboration and the emergence of monopolies and integrated delivery systems in the USA and concludes by finding politics and political decision making of overriding importance.

The purpose of this study is to examine procurement professionals’ perceptions of public-private partnerships in contract arrangements and to explore decision-making that takes place in the contracting process.

A grounded theory approach is applied to Simon’s (1947) model of decision-making to better understand the perceptions of procurement professionals, especially because it pertains to public vs private sector contexts. The researchers collected data by conducting interviews and observing a compliance webinar of federal contracting employees.

The results show that in the decision-making process, Simon’s illustration of a means-end hierarchy is applicable for procurement decision-making because it is driven by activities that are evaluated using aims established by the organization.

The implications are that, in the procurement decision-making process, a means-end hierarchy is driven by the activities that are evaluated using aims established by the organization. Essentially, the activities are associated to a mean, a mean is associated to a sub-goal and the sub-goal supports the main aim of the organization.

This study supports the notion that training, information and procedures are a way for organizations to control behaviors and promote consistent results from their subordinates.

This study contributes by examining the drivers of procurement decision-making. Despite previous literature that focuses on practitioner discretion or emphasizes on socio-economic factors, this study highlights the linkages between practitioner decision-making and organizational aims and objectives. As such, the paper serves to illustrate the vital connection between procurement activities and outputs.

This paper is framed under the relevance of collaborative governance models in smart cities that are members of the EUROCITIES network and are involved in a working group about “creative citizenship” and seeks to analyse the use of new technologies by city governments in smart cities with the aim at improving e-participation of the citizenry in the public arena. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This research is based on two data collection methods. First, this paper performs an e-survey sent to leading European smart cities about the relevance of collaborative governance in strategies of cities, about the main pillars and outcomes of smart governance and about the model of participation in developing a smart city. Second, an examination of 47 local governments of smart cities included in the working group of “creative citizenship” in the EUROCITIES network is performed during March 2017 with the specific purpose of collecting data about smart technologies used for e-participation.

Sample smart cities believe that collaborative governance is necessary to be implemented in public sector management under the smart environment but less than 50 per cent of them have created citizen participation platforms to promote citizen involvement in public affairs and only a few of them promote online public consultations, discussions and petitions. Also, there are differences in perceptions and in e-participation tools used by sample smart cities in accordance with the administrative culture of the country in which these cities are located.

This paper contributes to fill the gap in the analysis of the relevance of collaborative governance models in smart cities and the use in these cities of transparency websites, open data projects or e-participation platforms to promote citizen involvement in the public affairs of the city.

Este artículo se enmarca dentro del estudio de los modelos de gobernanza colaborativa en las ciudades inteligentes y analiza aquéllas que son miembros de la red EUROCITIES y, además, participan en un grupo de trabajo sobre "ciudadanía creativa", buscando analizar el uso de las nuevas tecnologías por parte de los gobiernos de estas ciudades inteligentes con el objetivo de mejorar la e-participación pública.

Esta investigación se basa en dos métodos de recopilación de datos. En primer lugar, este documento realiza una encuesta electrónica enviada a las principales ciudades inteligentes europeas sobre: a) la relevancia de la gobernanza colaborativa en las estrategias de las ciudades; b) los principales fundamentos y resultados de la gobernanza inteligente; y c) el modelo de participación en el desarrollo de una ciudad inteligente. En segundo lugar, este trabajo realiza, a fecha de mayo de 2017, un análisis de las nuevas tecnologías utilizadas por 47 gobiernos locales de estas ciudades inteligentes (aquéllas incluidas en el grupo de trabajo de "ciudadanía creativa" en la red EUROCITIES) para facilitar la participación electrónica de la ciudadanía.

Las ciudades inteligentes de muestra creen que la gobernanza colaborativa debe ser implementada en la gestión de la ciudad inteligente, pero menos del 50% han creado plataformas de e-participación ciudadana para promover la involucración de la ciudadanía en los asuntos públicos, y sólo unas pocas de estas ciudades promueven el desarrollo de consultas, discusiones y peticiones online. Además, un análisis realizado por culturas administrativas destaca la existencia de diferencias entre las percepciones obtenidas de los gestores de las ciudades inteligentes de la muestra y las herramientas que estas ciudades utilizan para fomentar la e-participación pública.

Este documento contribuye a llenar el vacío en la investigación sobre el análisis de la relevancia de los modelos de gobernanza colaborativa en ciudades inteligentes y el uso de web de transparencia, de datos abiertos o de plataformas de participación electrónica para promover la participación ciudadana en los asuntos públicos dentro de estas ciudades.

Owners of the US-based sport teams are seeing consistent gains on their financial investments, no matter the success of their teams on the playing field or their impact on the surrounding community. Sports teams are a part of an ecosystem comprised of primary and secondary stakeholders. The authors explore this phenomenon using a stakeholder perspective to understand how different business models and ownership structures optimize stakeholder value.

The authors employ an evaluative conceptual approach to examine the dominant model in the US, European ownership structures and public-private partnerships (PPPs). T finalize these comparisons by exploring a fourth business model and ownership structure – a relatively unique option in the US deployed by the Green Bay Packers – which we refer to as the maximized value partnership (MVP). These comparisons are followed by practical advice for owners in regard to these governance mechanisms.

The MVP ownership model has the potential to level the playing field between public and private actors. This potential is realized by fusing some of the best practices from European football clubs, in particular aspects of the stock market and supporter trust models.

By evaluating the most common ownership structures for sports teams, t provide an alternative model as well as practical advice for owners.

Myths matter. They are one of the ways by which we seek to make sense of the world; understanding myths helps us understand not only the world around us but ourselves as well. Governance myths – myths that we tell about the state and our relationship to it or about the structures and figures making up our government and our relationships to them – can serve as a valuable means of gaining insight into civil society and for illuminating the goals and values of good governance. Categorizing governance myths can aid in that process. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This paper develops a typology of governance myths, and then explores mythic types and their implications for governance.

A typology of myths facilitates systematic examination of fundamental stories told to explain and illustrate governance. Characteristics of myths at each level of governance may be used to better understand implicit expectations and assumptions about particular aspects of governance.

This typology can be used by scholars and practitioners to deconstruct stories told about governance and more effectively respond to citizens’ perceptions of the public sector.

A central question of public administration is how political principals secure the cooperation of administrators within organisational frames and contexts; increasingly, rational influences are being considered alongside bounded rationality and non-rational influences. This paper aims to explore the intent of New Zealand’s Public Service Act 2020 in managing administrative behaviour.

The methodology is primarily ethnographic, combining emic and etic perspectives. A mixed-methods approach comprises participant observer field notes and meeting documentation, substantiated by official documents; documents were analysed thematically and triangulated with other data sources.

The Public Service Act introduces new bounds on administrative behaviour. The stated rationale for these changes reveals an attempt to set limits on the principal–agent relationship between politicians and administrators and causes predictable deviations from rational behaviour by cultivating public service motivation and a unified public service identity.

As the legislation in question was only passed in 2020, it is too early to definitively assess the ultimate impact of legislation on administrative behaviour. This case study demonstrates that behavioural approaches to public administration are being applied intentionally by governments. The choice architecture created in the case study blends rational, bounded, and non-rational influences. Together, this produces a bricolage of semi-relevant theories from other disciplines, especially psychology, to explain administrative behaviour. Further refinement is needed to develop a cohesive and comprehensive theory of administrative behaviour that can account for contemporary practice.

Administrators act as agents of political principals, within ethical and rules-based limitations and influenced by public service motivation and social identity. Shifting from implicit to explicit choice architecture does not negate possible tensions between bounds and can signal them more explicitly. Shared symbols are sometimes intended to influence identity and therefore adherence to behavioural norms.

This paper explores the manipulation of choice architecture as a viable strategy for altering behaviour for the better and, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, is the first known instance of choice architecture being “legislated in” rather than merely “showing through”. This study illustrates the blending of rational, boundedly rational and non-rational factors into a choice architecture for public administrators that help mediate the biases and challenges of principal–agent relationships (which form a cascade in New Zealand’s public administration system).

Over the 30 years, public management and administration scholars have crossed disciplinary boundaries to build a body of scholarship on collaboration for public good, services, and values. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Public management and administration researchers need to integrate the scholarship on collaboration through systems thinking. How do we define collaboration? How do we distinguish among the categories of collaborative public management (CPM), collaborative governance (CG), and networks? How do systems and institutional context shape collaboration in these categories? Within these categories, what are our units of analysis: individual leadership, organizations, or groups in collaboration processes? How do we apply what we know to practice and design?

The work requires that the authors examine CPM, CG, and networks in their larger and nested institutional contexts to determine how they are related to and shape each other. The Institutional Analysis and Development framework may inform this work. CPM or networks may be nested in CG processes and structures in inter-governmental contexts.

Researchers need more clarity as to the context within which CPM, CG, and networks occur, and in units of analysis and the roles of individual people as managers and as agents of organizations, as distinguished from organizations as constructs.

Scholars need to apply research to practice related to designing systems and structures in which collaboration occurs.

As humankind faces increasingly complex and multifaceted policy problems that cross inter-governmental and international boundaries and require inter-sectoral work, managers and organizations must improve both the design of collaboration in governance and management and mastery of essential skills to participate in collaboration.

CPM, CG, and network research does not sufficiently incorporate or control for institutional context into research design.